ed companions, whom they could not, however, guarantee from the
stones and other missiles hurled at them. For a few days the public
services were intermitted at the earnest request of the Prince of La
Roche-sur-Yon, in the interest of good order and to prevent
disturbance.[1231] But a month later the Huguenots assembled openly, and
in still greater numbers. On reaching the suburbs, the women were placed
in the centre, with the men who had come on foot around them, while
those who were mounted on horseback shielded the whole from attack. A
body of guards was posted by the prince in the immediate
neighborhood.[1232]

[Sidenote: Montpellier.]

[Sidenote: Churches visited and stripped.]

In the south of France the people were less easily curbed, and the
indiscretion or treachery of their enemies often furnished provocation
for acts which the sober judgment of their pastors refused to sanction.
The chapter of the cathedral of Montpellier, with the view of overawing
the city, had, in October, introduced a garrison into the commanding
Fort St. Pierre. On a Sunday (the nineteenth of October) the Protestants
laid siege, and on the succeeding day the chapter entered into a
composition with the citizens, by which the canons retained the liberty
of celebrating their services, but bound themselves to lay down their
arms and dismiss the soldiers they had called in. When, however, a
soldier, as he was leaving, drew a pistol and killed one of the
Protestants, the fury of the latter could not be repressed. They cried
that treacherous designs were on foot, and madly killed many of the
canons and their sympathizers. Then, directing their indignation against
the churches, where the doctrine that no faith need be kept with
heretics had been inculcated, they overturned in a few hours the work of
four or five centuries. The next day, of sixty churches and chapels in
Montpellier or its neighborhood, not one was open. Not a priest, not a
monk, dared to show his face. Yet this same excitable populace, which
had been wrought up to frenzy by a soldier's treacherous act, submitted
without resistance when, on the twentieth of November, Joyeuse, in the
king's name, published the obnoxious edict for the restitution of all
churches within twenty-four hours. The cathedral was given up, and the
services according to the rites of the reformed church were held in the
spacious "Ecole mage," until, by a new arrangement with the canons, the
Protestants wer